\u0027Widespread defense shortfalls hinder Canadian capabilities,\u0027 the document says, \u0027while straining partner relationships and alliance contributions\u0027
Since February 2022, Canada has provided Ukraine more than $1 billion of military aid, including armoured vehicles, ammunition, a surface-to-air missile system that it sourced from the United States and eight German-made Leopard II tanks that it transferred to Poland for delivery to Ukraine. The Canadian Armed Forces has trained more than 36,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel since 2015 and leads a NATO battle group in Latvia.
“Whether that translates into government-wide action is a different question with a different answer,” Buck told The Post. “There has been underinvestment in defense and broader security for quite a while now in Canada, from my perspective, and through successive governments.” Trudeau, in public, has been noncommittal when asked when Canada will meet the target. Privately, the document says, he has “told NATO officials that Canada will never reach 2% defense spending.” It notes that the military budget has been below 1.4 percent of gross domestic product for 26 years.Article content
Canada’s defense policy calls for defense spending to increase by more than 70 percent from 2017 to 2026, he said. But even if the country fulfills that aim, it will still fall short of the 2 percent baseline. It says that nearly all of Canada’s 78 Leopard II tanks “require extensive maintenance and lack spare parts.” In one unit, only nine of 40 are fully or partially operational. The assessment says the military lacks half the pilots it requires and calls procurement decisions “politically motivated, constrained by limited staffing and not properly codified in budget items.”
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